Chapter 1: Ambition
Why Wanting More is the Start of Everything
This is the first chapter of an unfolding book about designing a life that expands. I'm writing it as I live it — without pretending to have it all figured out.
There’s a moment that comes before anything begins. Before the plan, before the pivot, before the actual change. It’s the moment you decide you want more. Not more stuff. Just more from your time, your work, your days. More out of the people you spend time with. More clarity in how you show up. A bigger canvas.
That’s ambition. And it’s usually quiet. It doesn’t arrive like a lightning bolt. It just starts tapping on your shoulder until you either pay attention or convince yourself to ignore it. For me, that’s where things began. Not with a project or a job switch or a big leap. Just with a feeling I couldn’t shake — that staying still would slowly turn into going backwards. That there was a version of me out there I hadn’t become yet.
Ambition gets a bad reputation sometimes. People treat it like it’s about ego, or greed, or proving something. But I think real ambition is just awareness. It’s looking around at what you’ve built so far and quietly deciding that there’s more left in you — and that it’s worth trying.
That decision — to want more — changes everything. It turns restlessness into curiosity. It turns boredom into a search. It’s what makes the unknown feel like an invitation instead of a threat. Every big change I’ve made started with that small internal shift. Not because I had a five-step plan. Just because I was done waiting for something to change on its own.
Ambition isn’t about knowing all the steps. It’s about deciding to move, even when you don’t. The decision itself is the act of ambition — the moment you say, “I’m going to do this,” with the quiet confidence that you’ll figure the rest out as you go. Until you decide, thinking is just a loop. You’re not really going anywhere. But once you decide, your mind starts working differently. It stops circling and starts building.
And maybe that’s the simplest way to measure ambition — by the scale of the things you’re willing to decide on. The bigger the decision you feel comfortable making without all the answers, the bigger your ambition really is.
And like anything else, ambition can be scaled. The more you act on it, the more natural it becomes to take on bigger and bigger things. It stops being about whether you’ll succeed or fail — and becomes more about what you're capable of holding. Ambition builds capacity.
Practicing the Muscle
I remember taking New Year's resolutions very seriously — not in a dramatic way, but in a personal, deliberate one. I wasn’t trying to overhaul my life. Just making small commitments that felt meaningful. One year it was to take one trip each month. Another year it was to run a few 5Ks. Once, it was as simple as avoiding certain foods or trying new ones. They were small, quiet resolutions, easy enough to forget — but I didn’t.
I kept doing them. And something strange happened: I started to believe myself. Each time I followed through on one of those promises, something shifted. The next year, the goals were a little bigger. The risks felt a little less intimidating. The voice saying "maybe you could do this" started to show up more often. What started as a few casual goals slowly became a mindset I couldn’t shake — one where staying still felt more dangerous than moving forward.
Eventually, I stopped waiting for a clean starting point or perfect conditions. I began to make decisions that felt much larger. Not because I had all the answers, but because I’d practiced trusting myself to figure things out along the way. That’s what ambition had become for me — not an impulse, but a muscle.
It wasn’t some grand plan. But looking back, that’s when I started taking ambition seriously. Not just as a vague sense of wanting more, but as a practice. A habit of deciding. And one day, without needing a special reason, I decided to do something I might’ve once thought was too far out of reach.
You can’t scale anything — not a career, not a relationship, not your sense of self — without first deciding that you want it to grow. That’s what ambition really is. It’s the start of momentum. It’s the beginning of a better story. That’s why this chapter comes first. Because everything else in this book — every decision, every bet, every risk — only matters if you’ve decided on that one simple thing first: You’re ready for more.
Ambition — wanting more — is truly the start of everything.